On the Tincture of Gold or True Potable Gold

to be communicated to the human body. The ancients therefore applied great diligence to the reduction of gold, in which they found nothing more excellent than the spirit of wine, made most pure and most subtle by the benefit of distillation. They did not, however, choose common gold melted from stones or washed from sand; but that which had been purified by the benefit of fire, and philosophically vivified and unlocked—not, indeed, by the help of corrosive spirits, after the common manner of vulgar chemists, but by the benefit of a certain water, which nature gives of its own accord without the violent aid of distillation; by which they manifested that which was hidden in the gold, and concealed that which was manifest; and thereby rendered it apt for the separation of its soul, that is, its Tincture, from the thick, black, and superfluous body. For they knew that the compact body of gold has no affinity with vital spirits: wherefore, for their elixir, they chose only the most subtle part of the gold—namely, its color or Tincture—which they joined radically with the spirit of wine, and once joined, rendered the spiritual and volatile things together such that neither could be separated from the other in fire again; and indeed, in the fire, they were either together sublimable or, by longer digestion, coagulated into a fixed stone, which they held for the highest treasure in this world.

Since those ancient Philosophers therefore affirm and confirm that there is no medicine under the sun more excellent than that which is made from the philosophical union of wine and gold, and their volatilization, and re-